Photo: COWI A/S

Soil Structure Interaction 

In depth understanding of the soil-structure interaction is a prerequisite for economic and safe bridge design. The multidisciplinary set-up of COWI's design teams, where geotechnical and marine experts are included, ensures that COWI performs state-of-the-art services irrespective of ground conditions.

Due consideration of soil-structure interaction requires adequate knowledge of the ground conditions. COWI's geotechnical group has extensive experience in assessment of soil/rock parameters from field investigations, laboratory testing and monitoring of real structures, allowing realistic input to commercial and in-house software packages used to evaluate the soil-structure interaction.

Photo: COWI A/S

Soil-structure interaction analyses range from assessment of the behaviour of the bridge structures in serviceability limit states to very severe displacement in ultimate limit states, dealing with ship impacts, ice loads etc.

For piled structures COWI has developed a pile module for the IBDAS software to allow for full soil-structure integration.